Exploiting Interval Arithmetic for predicting real arrays performances — The linear case

The analysis of the performances of linear antenna arrays is addressed in this work through an innovative strategy based on Interval Arithmetic. The tolerance bounds of the power patterns radiated by linear arrays, where errors are considered on the excitation amplitudes, are analytically determined by means of rules of Interval Arithmetic. The proposed method can be useful to antenna engineers since it allows to a-priori estimate in an efficient and reliable way the real array performances avoiding time-consuming and not always reliable statistical analysis tools. Preliminary results are included to show the potentialities of the proposed method.